Abstract

Advances in sequencing technologies have triggered the development of many bioinformatic tools aimed to analyze 16S rDNA sequencing data. As these tools need to be tested, it is important to simulate datasets that resemble samples from different environments. Here, we introduce M& Ms, a user-friendly open-source bioinformatic tool to produce different 16S rDNA datasets from reference sequences, based on pragmatic ecological parameters. It creates sequence libraries for 'in silico' microbial communities with user-controlled richness, evenness, microdiversity and source environment. M&Ms allows the user to generate simple to complex read datasets based on real parameters that can be used in developing bioinformatic software or in benchmarking current tools.Availability and implementation: The source code of M&Ms is freely available at https://github.com/ggnatalia/MMs (GPL-3.0 License).Contact: ngarcia@cnb.csic.esSupplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Published in

Bioinformatics
2022, volume: 38, number: 7, pages: 2057-2059
Publisher: OXFORD UNIV PRESS

Authors' information